Sea turtle nesting sites in Labuan are declining. As compared to 2016 there are a third fewer such landings on Kuraman and Rusukan Besar islands by hawksbill turtles, olive-ridley turtles and green turtles. So says Anuar Deraman, director of Labuan Marine Park. “Despite [an] increase of 18% in hawksbill sea…

More than 35,000. That’s how many Sunda pangolins are known to have been lost to poaching and wildlife trafficking within a few short years in neighboring Indonesia. Shocking? You bet. According to a new study by the wildlife-monitoring watchdog TRAFFIC, as many as 35,632 pangolins were seized in 111 enforcement…

A half century ago there were still around 3,000 tigers in the wild around Malaysia. Today there may well be as few as 250 left, less than a tenth of that figure. And if we don’t do all we can to save the last few hundred tigers, there won’t be…

For many Indonesians, songbirds aren’t just pretty little things that gladden the heart with their joyful chirps. They are invaluable parts of their culture and very identity. Many of these hobbyists will go to great lengths to acquire prized birds. Those lengths include poaching rare songbirds relentlessly from forests. And…

Millions of ringgit in losses over an area of 30 hectares. That’s how much damage a herd of feeding elephants can inflict on a plantation, according to the Sabah Wildlife Department. In just a single night elephants can destroy six hectares of crops, the department’s head Augustine Tuuga explained. “Elephant…

In one painting titled “Mother Earth Sustains,” a voluptuous woman suckles a young babe in arms while a tiger lounges by her side as if the stately predator was but a pussycat. In another artwork entitled “The Gift,” Mother Earth cuddles a tiger in a lotus-flecked pool beside an orangutan…

News travels fast and the butchery of some 100 endangered sea turtles on an island off Semporna in Sabah has made news worldwide in conservationists circles since the carcasses of the reptiles were discovered a week or so ago. Such is the fate of Malaysia these days: often the country,…

Another two pygmy elephants are dead in Sabah, both of them having killed by people. The remains of the two jumbos were found only a few days apart in Tawau and Sandakan by wildlife officials. At least one of the pachyderms may well have been killed by poachers for its…

Ending all poaching of Malayan tigers is an august goal, and key players in Malaysian have set out to do just that. Several governmental bodies (including the Malaysian Armed Forces, the Royal Malaysian Police and the Forestry Department) have joined forces with conservationist groups like WWF-Malaysia to save the nation’s…

You might think that Malaysian authorities’ stepped-up efforts to clamp down on poachers and wildlife traffickers have these wrongdoers on the run. Poachers and traffickers are cowering in fear of arrest, doing all they can to remain undetected. Right? Wrong. Some of the poachers clearly don’t give a hoot about…

Even in Sabah’s biodiverse forests with their cornucopia of exotic animals, proboscis monkeys are stand-outs. The reddish-brown primates are famous for their flamboyant looks, thanks largely to their large and elongated nozzles. They use those mighty sniffers to amplify the sound of their calls through the canopies of forests they call…

Among the big cats of the world, it isn’t just tigers that are in serious trouble. Cheetahs, those iconic speedy predators, are “sprinting towards the edge of extinction,” according to a team of experts from the Zoological Society of London, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the conservationist group Panthera. The team’s study shows that only…

Some of Malaysia’s most iconic and beloved animals are also its most endangered. They are beloved not because they are endangered; rather, they are endangered despite being beloved. This simple fact is something worth pondering. Take tigers. The very national identity of Malaysia is predicated on the majestic predators. Tigers are featured on the…

Traditional Chinese medicine – or most of it at any rate – is utter tosh. Rhino horns, whether consumed in powered form or any other, do not cure gout or rheumatism, much less cancer. Ground tiger bones or whiskers do nothing to alleviate meningitis or malaria, nor does the consumption…

They maim and kill and cause untold suffering. They can sever limbs and cause severe injuries. Unless freed in time from them, animals, large and small, may die of thirst, starve to death, or become prey to predators as they are pinned down and unable to escape. In other words,…

It was too late for the tiger, but Malaysian authorities pounced just in time to arrest its killers, three poachers, in the Kemaman district of Terengganu in late January. The three Malaysian men, all in their 50s, had killed the Malayan tiger, seeking to sell its body parts for RM10,000….

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Clean Malaysia is an independent online news site covering all aspects of Malaysia’s environmental landscape. We are dedicated to delivering news, analysis and opinions to both Malaysians and the international community. Our mission is to raise awareness of Malaysia as a tropical natural beauty but also to bring to light environmental dangers and encourage a debate about the future of Malaysia’s sustainable development.